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3-Grain Soup

A couple of years ago, I only had two soup recipes – and I only used them once or twice a season.

This year, I think I’ve tried twenty new soup recipes, and have remade a few of them.

I’m not really into sipping cosommé (do people do that??). I like a soup that eats like a meal, but doesn’t come in a ready-made gelatinous blob. I’m not sure where the dividing line between soup and stew is, but I think I’m clumsily walking along it.

This soup was a great find, because it allowed me to use a few ingredients I don’t normally buy (like wheat berries and le puy lentils). Do you really need to buy le puy lentils? I don’t think so. I’ve made the soup twice now: once with le puy lentils; and once with brown lentils. Both were great. This is my first time cooking le puy lentils, so I haven’t quite formed an opinion of them.

If you’re not sure whether you’ll ever use wheat berries or lentils again, go to your local bulk store and buy just the amount you need. I do that to save money, and cupboard space.

The amount of garlic in it may sound shocking, but don’t skimp! The garlic mellows out while it cooks, and lightly flavours the soup. I prefer to mash the whole cloves in my bowl just before I eat – it’s less startling than a mouthful of garlic, and nicely seasons the rest of the soup.

3-Grain Soup

One tip – don’t undercook the soup. You might think that the rice should be intact, but I would disagree. I tested the soup with the rice intact, and the broth seemed a little thin. A little more cooking, and the rice starts to break down and thicken the soup. You don’t need the rice to stay perfect in order to have a nice texture – the lentils and the wheat berries do just fine in that regard.

Where to buy in Toronto?

Le puy lentils – I thought I should be able to find these at Bulk Barn, or Loblaws, but no luck. I got them from Rube’s at St. Lawrence Market. You should be able to find them at ‘finer’ bulk stores.
Wheat Berries – These are pretty easy to find. I got mine at Bulk Barn, but I think you can find them at Rube’s. You might be able to get them from grocery stores.

3-Grain Soup

Source: Adapted from this recipe.

6-8 servings

Ingredients:

2-3 medium leeks, white parts only, halved lengthwise and sliced (3-4 cups of sliced leek)
2 medium carrots, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 bay leaves
1/2 teaspoon thyme
Fine sea salt
14-ounces canned peeled whole tomatoes, crushed, with juices
6 cups cold water or light-flavoured stock
1 head of garlic, separated into whole peeled cloves
1/3 cup brown rice
1/3 cup le Puy lentils
1/3 cup wheat berries
Freshly ground pepper

Preparation:

Heat oil in a preheated, heavy soup pot.
Add the leeks, carrots, olive oil, bay leaves, thyme and 1 teaspoon of salt. Cover and cook over low heat until softened.
Add the tomatoes with their juices, the water/stock and garlic and bring to a boil over medium heat.
Turn the heat down to low, add the rice, lentils and wheat berries, cover and simmer until the grains are tender, 45 minutes to 1 hour.
Discard the bay leaves, season with salt and pepper and serve.

Greek Fakkes (Lentil Soup)

Eating vegetarian can sometimes be tricky, because you have to really think about ways of getting the protein you need. On the other hand, I know so many meat eaters that don’t get enough of the nutrients you usually get from veggies! Hahaha. I guess we’re really all in the same boat here.

In the winter months, it’s easier to remember to eat legumes because they are perfect in hearty, warming dishes like Fakkes (Greek lentil soup).

Continue reading Greek Fakkes (Lentil Soup)

Italian Seafood Stew

I mostly picked this recipe because it uses a crazy amount of fennel, and a pile of seafood. How often do I get to use fennel in a dish on purpose?

Continue reading Italian Seafood Stew

Colombo Stew (Cooking with Épices de Cru, Pt. 1)

Now that it’s colder, it’s time I start using my Épices de Cru spice blends. The first dish I made is a stew that comes right from their website, with lamb and a few root vegetables.
Continue reading Colombo Stew (Cooking with Épices de Cru, Pt. 1)

Daring Seafood Gumbo

This month’s Daring Kitchen challenge is Gumbo!

Gumbo is a stew from Louisiana that is often made up of meat or shellfish, and is thickened with a dark roux, okra and/or filé powder. I was already excited to try cooking a dark roux again (for the second time ever), but things got even more exciting when I realized I had to get a new seasoning – filé.
Continue reading Daring Seafood Gumbo

Daring Confit & Cassoulet

What the heck is a cassoulet? I had heard the word before, but wasn’t too sure what it was before it became the Daring Cooks’ challenge for January.

Cassoulet is a particular kind of white bean stew that originated in France. It’s become one of those dishes that ignite debates over who made it first, and what recipe is authentic. Sorry to offend, folks, but mine isn’t especially “authentic”, being vegetarian. There is usually a lot of meat involved.

One of the things that you see in many cassoulet recipes is duck confit. One of the requirements of the challenge was to make some kind of confit, and again there were some veggie options. I had to look up what a confit was, exactly, since I’ve always heard it associated with duck. Basically, ‘confit’ is used to describe a few things, in particular a method of preserving food by cooking it in a fat. In the case of meats, they are usually cooked in their own fats. For things like garlic, it is cooked in oil.

I made garlic confit.

So what exactly does one use garlic confit for? You can use it much the same way you might use a baked garlic – the cooking process mellows out the flavours, and gives it a creamy spreadable texture. This makes it (and the oil it’s cooked and stored in) easy to use in dips, soups, sauces… just about anything. Being a big lover of garlic, I thought this would be a fun thing to try making.

That done, I had to decide how to retain the spirit of a cassoulet without the meat. I opted to make the seitan sausages from last month’s challenge, and use them in the stew. I also added some smoked paprika to add some depth to the flavour.

I’m pretty sure it didn’t taste like a real cassoulet, but it was really good!

Vegetarian Cassoulet - closer — Vegetarian Cassoulet

Our January 2011 Challenge comes from Jenni of The Gingered Whisk and Lisa from Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drives. They have challenged the Daring Cooks to learn how to make a confit and use it within the traditional French dish of Cassoulet. They have chosen a traditional recipe from Anthony Bourdain and Michael Ruhlman.

Recipes after the jump!
Continue reading Daring Confit & Cassoulet

It’s all in the Lime – Qormeh Sabzi

Qormeh Sabzi (also written as Ghormeh Sabzi) is thought to possibly be the national dish of Iran, and after just one bite I could understand why.

Although made up mostly of an assortment of fresh herbs, there is no doubt that the real stars of the show are the Persian dried limes, leemoo-amonee (or “Limu-omani”). They aren’t exciting to look at, in fact you might find them kind of ugly (J thought they looked dusty), but they add the most amazing flavour to the dish that I’m sure can’t be replicated. I was lucky enough to find some at Akram’s, in Kensington Market.

Kensington Market is also a great place to find lots of fresh herbs at a decent price. I bought almost all of the herbs I needed there.

How to describe Qormeh Sabzi? It’s a rich, dark green stew made up of lots of herbs, kidney beans, lamb and the leemoo-amonee. It’s kind of hard to describe how the herbs taste in it, because it’s very different from using fresh herbs to a dish – it’s more like when you cook with leafy greens, like spinach. The dried lime doesn’t make the stew incredibly sour – because they are whole, and dried, a mellow lime flavour comes out. That is, unless you press the liquids out of the lime after cooking – this will intensify the lime flavour, and is sometimes best done in your own dish, if you are serving a group.

If you want to live on the edge, you can even eat the lime. I like to eat the outer parts – they are very strong, and a little bitter, but so much fun!

The lamb is actually a pretty important part, and this time around I opted to go without it. I haven’t cooked meat in about 15 years, and this is the first dish that has made me want to change that. Anyone that has had lamb knows that it has a strong flavour – this is why I like it, and why others don’t. That’s why, for me, it really is important in Qormeh Sabzi. My version of the dish was missing that aspect of the flavour. Other people make it with beef instead, which would make it taste a little bit different (good for folks who don’t like lamb).

Not the prettiest picture, but soooo delicious.

If you haven’t had Persian food before, you are missing out!! So was I, until earlier this year. If you like complex flavours, stews, interesting ingredients, you should definitely try this. People who like Indian food will probably like this — sure, there are lots of differences (for one, Persian food is not nearly as spicy hot!), but there are some similarities as well (basmati rice, stews, legumes).

People in Toronto should try Pomegranate restaurant, on College St. near Bathurst. It’s usually busy, so be sure to make reservations!! You won’t regret it!

Continue reading It’s all in the Lime – Qormeh Sabzi

Adaptation – Seitan Tomato Bredie

Since I haven’t issued myself a month-long challenge for May, I’m taking on a couple of one-off challenges. This challenge was issued by Nupur, who writes for One Hot Stove. The goal is to find a recipe posted on another blog, and change something major about it and repost, with a link to the original blog post.

This probably isn’t a surprise, but I chose to veggify a meat dish. This dish could also be made gluten-free by using a non-wheat flour to thicken at the end (er, and by not using seitan, which is basically all wheat gluten).

I chose to make a South African Tomao Bredie (stew), which was originally posted by Asha, who writes for Fork Spoon Knife.

The reason I chose this particular recipe is because it is a South African dish that makes use of many spices that I’ve been ignoring lately. This is a very aromatic dish, featuring LOTS of ginger, allspice, cloves, cardamom and peppercorns. YUM! I’ve never tried cooking any South African dishes before, so I thought this would be a great place to start.

Also, the poster wrote about the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency books when describing why SHE chose the recipe… while I haven’t read the books, I really enjoyed the TV series on HBO (Miss 97%!). So… yes, I choose recipes for a combination of reasons, some that make sense and some that do not.

I suppose I need to adapt the inspiration for this dish as well, instead of just stealing the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency reference… If I try really hard, I can just imagine Wikus Van De Merwe eating this (before his run-in with the aliens) in Joburg.

Wikus Van De Merwe, from the movie District 9

This was a great dish to have on a cool fall day. Yes, I know it is the middle of May — it FEELS LIKE FALL this week! I’m trying really hard not to be angry at the weather man, filtering some of the anger into cooking. Enjoy!

Tomato Bredie

The original recipe can be found at Fork Spoon Knife.

Marinade Ingredients:

1 inch chunk of ginger, minced
2 tsp all spice powder
1/4 tsp salt

Stew Ingredients:

1 lb seitan, cut into 1″ cubes (I used this recipe)
1 tsp oil
4-5 whole cloves
1 cinnamon stick, or 1/2 tsp ground
4-5 cracked black peppercorns
1 medium onions, diced
1 inch chunk of ginger, minced
2-3 cardamom pods
6 medium tomatoes, diced, divided (4 for the stew, 2 for garnish)
1 jalapeno, diced (although I don’t think the dish needs it… the ginger offers enough heat)
1 cup vegetable stock
salt, pepper as needed
3 medium potatoes, cut into 1 inch cubes
1 medium green pepper, chopped
1 Tbsp butter
1 Tbsp flour

Aromatic Rice Ingredients:

2 cardamom pods
1 cinnamon stick, or 1/2 tsp ground
4 cloves
4 cracked peppercorns
2 bay leaves
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups basmati rice
3C water

Preparation:

THE NIGHT BEFORE: Coat the seitan pieces evenly with the marinade.Cover and refrigerate overnight.
Heat the oil in a deep sauté pan on med-high heat. Toast the cloves, cinnamon, whole peppercorns in the oil until you can smell the spices.
Add the onions and sauté until browned.
Add the seitan, ginger and cardamom and brown the seitan a little bit. Turn the heat down to medium, cover and let simmer for 5-7 minutes.
Add the tomatoes, jalapeno, stock, salt and pepper and stir well. Simmer for five more minutes, stirring occasionally.
Add the potatoes and simmer until they are cooked through, about 10-15 minutes.
While the stew is simmering, prepare the rice:
1. In a medium pot, heat up 1 tsp of oil. Add the spices, and cook until you start to smell them.
2. Add the rice and salt, stir thoroughly, and let it toast a little bit (but be careful not to let it burn!)
3. Add the water, let it come to a boil and reduce to med-low heat. Cover immediately and cook until the rice absorbs all of the water. Fluff with a fork when done.
About 10 minutes into the simmering, add the green pepper.
When the stew is cooked through, melt the butter in a small pan and add the flour to it. Cook for a minute and then add the roux to the stew to thicken.
Once the potatoes are cooked, heat up a small pan on med-low heat to prepare a roux. Melt the butter, and add the flour, stirring constantly until it forms a thin paste. Cook for about a minute.
Add the roux to the stew to thicken. Make sure it all gets incorporated into the stew, leaving no clumps.
Serve over hot aromatic rice and top with some fresh diced tomato. I also added some chopped green onion and diced avocado… not sure if it’s especially authentic, but it added some nice colour and I wanted to use up an avocado.

Daring (New) Brunswick Stew

The 2010 April Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Wolf of Wolf’s Den. She chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make Brunswick Stew. Wolf chose recipes for her challenge from The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook by Matt Lee and Ted Lee, and from the Callaway, Virginia Ruritan Club.

I opted to make a variation on the first recipe given. I usually don’t eat meat, so this dish posed quite a challenge for me. I think there were three or four different kinds of meat in the recipe… I replaced all of the meat with shrimps and seitan, the broth with a vegetable/shrimp broth. Since this likely changed the flavour quite a bit, I’ve jokingly labelled my variation of the recipe (New) Brunswick Stew. Any Canadians reading this will get the New Brunswick/seafood reference… right? (I’m sure there is nothing specifically New Brunswick about it. I just wanted a cute title).

I started by making a broth, which I based on one I got from a Seafood Gumbo recipe I plan to try eventually. I also had to make some seitan, a vegetarian meat substitute made with wheat gluten (sorry, GF folks!). Both of these things added to the cooking time, since I had to make them from scratch.

Next, I fried up some chile peppers. I got some fun dried chiles called Chilhuacle Negro that have a medium heat (5/10). I’m pretty new to chiles, so I didn’t want to get any that were too hot. That said, I should have kept some of the seeds in for a little more heat. This was where the excitement starts – the smell of the peppers and the oil in the pan are heavenly!

Chilhuacle Negro

Here is what the stew looked like in the early stages – the seitan is still in large chunks (to be sliced into thin strips in a later stage). While the broth started off looking quite red (from the chile peppers and the smoked paprika), it mellowed into a nice warm golden colour by the end.

(New) Brunswick Stew – in progress

Here is the final product, and the shot that everyone on Daring Cooks seems to be doing – the standing spoon shot. This came from the original recipe. To describe the texture of the finished stew, they said that Brunswick stew is not done properly “until the paddle stands up in the middle.”. Everyone has been doing their version of this shot, so I felt obliged to do the same. It was a hearty hearty stew, but the broth was not too thick and gloopy.

(New) Brunswick Stew – Standing Spoon

In the end, the stew turned out great! It was a bit of a challenge deciding what to use instead of meat, but I think the seitan worked wonderfully! This is definitely something I wouldn’t have known to seek out, and there’s no doubt I’ll be making this again.

Recipe after the jump.

Continue reading Daring (New) Brunswick Stew

3-Grain Soup

Related posts:

Tomato Bredie